


hanging abstract art in pitch-black rooms

by eneiryu



Series: mistakes aren't always regrets [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, In the Animal Clinic After the War, Knowing Better than to Expect a Straight Answer from a Druid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 10:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22848436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: “You knew it wouldn’t work,” Chris says, as Deaton steps out of the animal clinic’s office and into the main body of the exam room, “didn’t you?”
Relationships: Chris Argent & Alan Deaton
Series: mistakes aren't always regrets [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642510
Comments: 20
Kudos: 99





	hanging abstract art in pitch-black rooms

**Author's Note:**

> Written because the base idea occurred to me, and then wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it.

Chris still has Theo’s blood underneath his fingernails when he gets back to Beacon Hills.

He’d scrubbed down the house where Corey and Mason had been hiding out from top to bottom, eliminating every trace of evidence of their time there, but he hadn’t noticed the flecks of red seeped in between his skin and nails, not until he’d already left. He doesn’t think it’s from his clean-up, though; doesn’t think it’s from his time on his knees on the kitchen floor, mopping up the puddle of blood that Theo had left as he’d looked up at Chris and begged _I can explain_.

He thinks it’s from his time with his hand around Theo’s throat.

He thinks it’s from hauling Theo up after he’d shot him, and holding him there as he’d stared down at Theo, and Theo had stared up at him. 

Chris tries scraping it out using the nails of his opposite hand at stoplights, at intersections; on a thin stretch of rural California highway when he gets caught in an early-morning snarl of commuter traffic. It doesn’t really work, just leaves the tips of his nails raw and splotched red, and after a while he gives up, and pulls out his phone instead, and asks Scott to ask Liam to confirm that he and Theo had gotten back to Theo’s apartment—back _home_ —safe. 

_Did I leave the wards up?_ He finds himself wondering, and then he jolts and glares back at the person leaning impatiently on their horn behind him as he lets off the gas, and inches forward in the crush of traffic. But, no, he hadn’t: after he’d gotten to Theo’s apartment, and had seen Theo’s abandoned bracelet lying in a shallow pool of blood on a plate—after he’d thought _clever_ , impressed despite himself even as a flashfire of disbelieving fury had ignited in his chest—he’d left them down. There’d been no _point_ , after all: Theo had been gone.

Chris’ phone pings. Scott, agreeing to his request. Chris can sense the stiltedness of his reply even through the short text, and he exhales out a rough sigh; they were going to have to talk about what had happened, just as soon as Scott had time to sort out exactly how he felt about what had happened.

The traffic breaks, and Chris weaves his way through it until he can put his foot down on the gas in the leftmost lane, send himself leaping forward. He debates going back to the McCall’s, but Melissa will have already left for her shift at the hospital, and Scott had planned on taking Mason and Corey there to let them get some rest before they had to, inevitably, figure out exactly what it’d take to let them finish coming home. 

Chris rubs a hand over his chest, a phantom feeling between his ribs like fingers clenched tight around his heart, and LED headlights around him in the early dawn almost the exact same shade of ghostly blue that Mason’s eyes had been as he’d stood between Chris and Scott and Liam in front of himself and Theo behind, and had snarled _get back_. 

Chris’ phone pings again. Rafael, checking in. Even as Chris is tilting his screen to glance at the text, a second comes in; Noah. Jordan. Derek. _Ping, ping, ping_. Chris puts his phone back down as Malia and Cora respond as well, and drums his fingertips against his steering wheel. 

_I should go to the station_ , he thinks. They were just a few hours away from executing their trap for Monroe. He could use the extra time.

He doesn’t go to the station.

The sign on the door at the animal clinic says _Closed_ when he gets there, but Deaton’s car is in the lot, and there’s a soft warm spill of light eking out from underneath the closed office door when Chris steps up to the locked main entrance. Chris considers for a moment—a too-long moment, really, his head feeling cotton-filled and slow—and then he circles around back, and forces the lock on the loading bay door. 

He’s made it into the exam room by the time the office door creaks open. He’s leaned back with his arms crossed against the cool metal of the exam room table by the time Deaton appears within it.

“You knew it wouldn’t work,” Chris says, as Deaton steps out of the animal clinic’s office and into the main body of the exam room, “didn’t you?”

Deaton’s hands are in his pockets, and his expression is serene. “Good morning to you, too, Chris.”

“Deaton,” Chris says.

Deaton looks at him levelly for a handful of molasses-slow seconds, and then he inclines his head, just slightly. “I had my suspicions.”

“Which you didn’t feel like mentioning.” No matter how hard he tries to keep it out there’s the slightest bite to his words. He clenches his fists against his biceps.

Deaton just sighs. “And what would we have learned of him if the bracelet _had_ worked as intended, Chris?” 

Chris stares at him, thrown. Deaton looks steadily right back.

“That Theo Raeken is still capable of coming to heel when his leash is tugged?” He presses. “That when given no other choice, he’s capable of adopting his captors’ definitions of right and wrong?”

Chris feels his jaw tighten, and the line of his lips thin. Deaton smiles wanly.

“And what would he have learned of himself?” He continues, wondering. “That he remained nothing more than some freakish creature, too dangerous to be trusted unmuzzled? That he wasn’t, and never could be, anything more than what the Dread Doctors made of him?”

Chris thinks, suddenly— _again_ —of Mason standing between Scott and—no. Not between _Scott_ and _Theo_ , he corrects himself fiercely. Between _Chris_ , himself, and Theo. Mason hadn’t been worried about Scott. He hadn’t been worried about _Liam_. 

It wasn’t Scott’s or Liam’s chests that Corey had put his hand through.

“Regardless,” Chris replies, evenly enough to be _too_ even; evenly enough to be giving something away. “It wasn’t your decision to make.”

Deaton gives him a strange look. “On the contrary, of course it was.”

“ _What?_ ” Chris says, surprise and disbelief cracking open his otherwise cool tone.

“ _You_ asked _me_ to perform the necessary magics,” Deaton replies, still so serene; still so level. Unmoved by the tension Chris can feel in his own shoulders. “Choosing to act, or not act, is a decision. You asked me to act, and I acted. You asked me to decide, and I decided.” 

Chris stares at him, trying to put his hands on some part—on _any_ part—of Deaton’s claim that he could argue with; that he could pull apart and twist back around and expose the truth buried underneath. But Deaton hadn’t left him any. He’d acted. He’d decided.

 _That’s the problem_ , Chris had told Theo scant hours ago, _I-can-explain-I-can-explain-I-can-explain_ and Theo’s hand pressed to his bloody abdomen, black blood leaking through his fingers from the hole Chris had put there. _You always can_.

“And what if you’d been wrong?” Chris asks, low. “What if he _had_ actually hurt Mason or Corey? What if he _had_ been planning something?”

“Then I would have had to live with the consequences of my actions,” Deaton answers simply, his gaze steady, steady, steady on Chris’ face. “Just as you,” he adds, and with his expression never shifting, “would have had to live with the consequences of yours if you had actually killed him.”

Chris manages to keep his posture, straight shoulders and straight spine and straight gaze right back at Deaton. It’s the one victory he can claim.

“I should have known better,” he says after a while, silence between them and around them and Deaton never moving or shifting or fidgeting, “then to expect a straight answer from a _druid_.”

Deaton smiles, small but curl-lipped and with the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling. 

“Yes, well,” he says. “Perhaps you’re learning something of optimism after all.”

And Chris can’t help it: he laughs, low and quiet and exhausted.

Deaton stands still and lets him laugh. He stands still, and stays still, even after the laughter stops, and becomes something else, Chris’ eyes squeezing shut without his say so and his teeth gritting hard, so hard. He stays still, and doesn’t say a word, and is still stood still, right where he’d been, when Chris finally manages to blink back open his tired, gritty eyes. 

Deaton considers him for a moment, and then he leans back into the office, and comes back out with his jacket, which he starts sliding up his arms. Chris frowns lightly.

“The hunt for Monroe starts in a few hours, and you haven’t eaten, yes?” Deaton says, by way of explanation. “The cafe down the street does an excellent breakfast. And,” he adds, a little dryly, “the coffee refills are bottomless.”

Chris stares. “You want to go breakfast,” he says, more a baffled statement than question.

Deaton shrugs lightly. “I want to celebrate,” he corrects. “Whatever else _could_ have happened last night, two of our lost friends have come home. And unless I’m much mistaken,” he continues, more softly, “we seem to have officially gained a third.”

Deaton’s jacket is fully settled on his shoulders. He tucks his hands into its pockets, serene under Chris’ narrow-eyed, searching stare.

“In that case, I guess,” Chris says, finally, and straightens up off the exam room table. “I’ll have to trust your judgement.”

This time when Deaton smiles, it’s not a small thing at all. He leads Chris out.

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you liked, please consider a comment or a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/190966373225/hanging-abstract-art-in-pitch-black-rooms)!


End file.
